The One Thing About the ‘SNL’ Set That Hasn’t Changed in 50 Years
Saturday Night Live’s “home base” set has certainly changed a lot over the past five decades. When the show first began, guest hosts would deliver their monologue from a set that was intended to resemble an underground “club in the Village.” Later on, it looked more like an old fashioned theater, and then the Brooklyn Bridge. Eventually, there was the Grand Central Station look, which was first introduced in 2003, and has stuck around ever since.
Despite these wildly different aesthetic choices, remarkably, one thing about the set hasn’t changed in all this time: some old clock.
Architectural Digest recently toured Studio 8H, getting a peek at everything from SNL’s wig department to their creepy as hell makeup lab. While discussing home base, production designer Akira “Leo” Yoshimura said that one prop has been a staple of the set since the show first began 50 years ago. “There was a clock that we actually had, and we found, in 1975. It started then, and we kept hanging it in the sets,” Yoshimura revealed.
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It’s true, you can see the clock hanging behind Paul Simon as he sings “Still Crazy After All These Years” while dressed as a turkey:
And it’s right there as Tom Hanks takes the stage, just moments before joining the Five-Timers Club in 1990:
As Architectural Digest pointed out, the old wooden clock is now “the official timekeeper of the production.” And Lorne Michaels is weirdly fastidious about its accuracy. “It’s become such a part of our history that there is a stagehand, an old stagehand, Joe Riley, who goes and makes sure every Saturday that the clock is telling the exact right time, and also that the clock is wound,” Yoshimura explained.
Heidi Gardner confessed that the cast and crew still use the old clock during show nights. “If we have a sketch that’s cut for time, it’s because we’re watching this clock,” Gardner noted. “I think Lorne is always referring to this clock, and then says, ‘We don’t have time for that one.’”
While hanging a clock in a fake comedy club was a no-brainer, finding a place for the clock in the Grand Central Station set wasn’t easy. “I thought, ‘Where are we going to put this clock,’” production designer Joe DeTullio admitted. “I ended up making a little storefront.”
Unfortunately, it’s practically impossible for audiences to see now, tucked away in the window of a fake shoe shine shop. And for some reason, Michaels is fine that his venerated timepiece now hangs next to a pack of “Odor Stoppers.”
